Commitment to a sustainable peace

What is peace? In a world at times ravaged by armed conflict, from Africa to Asia, is peace simply an absence of war? Or is there more to it than that?

Today, on the International Day of Peace, it is important to reflect on some of these questions, particularly for an organisation like Greenpeace, whose founding values revolve around the defence of peace and a wide understanding that the issues of ecology and peace are two sides of the same coin.

Greenpeace is joining hands today with members of the global NGO coalition ‘Peace One Day’s Global Truce 2012’, in the simple objective of calling for and working towards a global day of ceasefire and non-violence.

Thousands of people across the world are dying as a result of senseless armed conflict. Many more also are dying in equally senseless ways as a direct consequence of the financial and human resources being squandered in pursuit of military solutions to disputes.

Rather than spend money preparing for conflict at any cost (to the tune of an astonishing $1.7 trillion, globally, this year alone), governments must focus their efforts on avoiding conflict, at all costs. That means redirecting the millions spent stockpiling the machinery of war and investing those same millions in the machinery of sustainability and equity.

This echoes the wishes of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who on this day of International Peace is calling for ‘Sustainable Peace for a Sustainable Future’. The destruction of our environment poses one of the greatest threats to peace because many conflicts are sparked by the desire to control dwindling resources.

Make no mistake: war wreaks havoc on the environment as well as on human life, whether it’s the monumental environmental destruction involved in testing nuclear armaments, or the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

In fact, the environment is often the first casualty of war – not to mention the ‘hidden’ war on the environment declared through resource drilling, mining and extraction. This war – also waged by governments and corporations – entails the same abuses and mutilations of ‘people’ wars, and is similarly fought in the pursuit of profits.

Take the Arctic, for example. The Arctic sea ice is melting faster than ever before but rather than heeding natures warning that our addiction to fossil fuels is destabilising the global climate, nations are racing to stake a claim on the Arctic so they can drill for the very fossil fuels that are causing the problem.

Our climate is warming, and like war, putting billions of people’s future in jeopardy. Climate change is taking its place as a major driver of conflict, as a major threat to international and national peace and security.

Humanitarian crises will occur with greater frequency and with more devastating effect if governments do not act to bring climate change under control. And yet governments, nationally and multilaterally, repeatedly fail to take decisive action.

There is an old Inuit saying: ‘Only when the ice breaks will you truly know your friends from your enemies’. The ice is breaking; we see its effects in sea ice levels as in record heat waves; as in the drying up of lake Chad, depriving millions of their source of livelihood.

Today, on this International Day of Peace, we reaffirm our belief that in order for the future to be peaceful it must be green.

I'm glad, M naidoo takes time for this kind of thoughts. I hope as the spokesman of Greenpeace, his schedule let him some room for deep thinking, ...

I'm glad, M naidoo takes time for this kind of thoughts. I hope as the spokesman of Greenpeace, his schedule let him some room for deep thinking, this is as important as doing the hero part.
Some people thinks peace is reachable only by war. Some other thinks peace is the absence of visible war.
This afternoon i will do some painting for peaceful protestation and soon i will go back to africa to get some "training". The world is not a coin, it is an imperfect globe with no sides. capitalism has reached its limit as it is constantly pushing people to live at their limit and forget their inner peace. Don,t you think their is no peace because people in the way our societies are made prevent them from reaching their inner peace?
Don't you think that if it can be war without bullet shot, it is because business is done in a military way?
Each year, more than a million dollar is spent in weapon, more than 500 millions is spent in advertising. Do you think advertising can lead to education? What if i ask an inuit these questions? Why Greenpeace France is hiring an ad expert to lead it's communication? Aren't Greenpeace suppose to innovate? So why to copy an existing pattern. Why do you think an NGO can function like Google? If inuit are so wise, let one of them lead the communication department. Give it a try.

You've been working for Greenpeace for 3 years now, do you think this experience made you speak your mind or had it taught you to speak like a politician?

This is a really interesting blog. And I think it is not suited to Greenpeace. From what I know of it, Greenpeace is about direct action, to the heart of the problem; not about Platonic platitudes about war, poverty, and what have you. Bravo Dr Naidoo! You are such a thinker...I stand in awe.
If Greenpeace hates war so much, go to Palestine, go to Iraq, to Somalia, to wherever there is war and try to stop it. I'm sure that if the CEO of Greenpeace gets run over by an Israeli bulldozer they can't really claim to have not seen him like they did with poor Rachel...
This is beside the fact that war is the biggest vested interest in the world, bigger than oil, than anything, and going up against it is beyond the task of anyone. Even the UN can't do it. Ever.

I'm astound that there is so few reaction to a topic on peace. Maybe people forget how important this is. Maybe p...

hello greenpeacers,

I'm astound that there is so few reaction to a topic on peace. Maybe people forget how important this is. Maybe peace don't need no adjective : no green, no sustainable, just peace as the word carry itself so much hope. So whether this tread is no on the frontpage anymore, i will continue a bit.

I've been taken myself sometimes in action, it was very exciting to lead a company of good fellows, trying to change the world, try to open its eyes. But in action, you are in a path where it is sometimes difficult to connect to the world and it suffering. Everything is organized in tasks, scheduled. You meet very nice people but you are in this momentum which sometimes makes you less receptive as you are really focused on what to do to complete the mission. In this state of mind, at this scale of time environment seems so important. It determines people everydays life : water, food, work, money, health.

Then I stayed. Because i was free and i wanted to really meet the people. I wanted to get to know why where happy, why they get to be sad, why some people are much linked to nature and not only nature as ressources. Today I will only speak of why they are sad, specially people you don't think on the first hand they are sad : poor people of rich cities who are sometimes richer than rich people in poor cities of the world.

They are sad because they live in a really violent world. Not the violence the human species had thousand years to adapt to. A knew kind of violence made of social pressure, work pressure which acts like poison. They are really providing the world in goods and services through their jobs but they are no recognition. As my parents are some of them, i consider them like heroes though they're not considered as saving the planet. Actually they make it breath as their boss decided to. Their happiness is only the hope to see their kids growing up, studying, building a family. Meanwhile, they endure work conditions that are worse and worse as time goes. Their boss only seeing them as statistics. Maybe there are workers happier than these working class heroes or maybe there is so much pressure than the whole system is crushing everybody at the base of the golden pyramid of capitalism.

Then they come back from work, try to release some pressure. Sometimes they miss some important moments with their kids, often they argue. The need to scream on somebody else as they're being screamed on at their work. They don't know it but it really affect their kids. Not sure they'll be able to break the vice circle. Neoliberalism, for some people is just a concept, for these people it is really a death reactor burning them slowly as they produce working power. What comes out? People? No Neoliberalism waste. You can do nothing with this sadness born from long years of slow burn of your personality, maybe just burry it deep inside you heart as it is toxic to people you love. With an toxicated heart comes only an apparent peace.

An old Grandfather said to his grandson, who came to him with anger at a friend who had done him an injustice, "Let me tell you a story.

I too, at times, have felt a great hate for those that have taken so much, with no sorrow for what they do.

But hate wears you down, and does not hurt your enemy. It is like taking poison and wishing your enemy would die. I have struggled with these feelings many times." He continued, "It is as if there are two wolves inside me. One is good and does no harm. He lives in harmony with all around him, and does not take offense when no offense was intended. He will only fight when it is right to do so, and in the right way.

But the other wolf, ah! He is full of anger. The littlest thing will set him into a fit of temper. He fights everyone, all the time, for no reason. He cannot think because his anger and hate are so great. It is helpless anger,for his anger will change nothing.

Sometimes, it is hard to live with these two wolves inside me, for both of them try to dominate my spirit."

The boy looked intently into his Grandfather's eyes and asked, "Which one wins, Grandfather?"

The Grandfather smiled and quietly said, "The one I feed."

Non violence is often and wrongly associated with physical non violence but most people around the world is also suffering of pressure they can't talk about. They can't talk about it because there is no democracy in companies. Which wolves are we feeding? We can change the world starting with the man/woman in the mirror. Instead of forcing young people into the mecanism of capitalism we can let them express what those children at the millenium has to offer us. I have so many good friends left aside of the road because they refuse to feed and be fed by this neoliberal philosophy that surround us. Their knowledge, their compassion, their creativity, their kind Spirit are thrown away as sooner or later they'll have to fit in the system, doing day to day job, get formatted by the rules of marketing.
Which Wolf are we feeding. As i search new ways to promote respect, non violence which Wolves am i supplying? Do i help people in their emancipation or am i only supplying some marketing process with good words?